Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling to leave

Top Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling will leave the White House at the end of the year and will be replaced by Jeffrey Zients, a former executive and entrepreneur who has twice served as acting budget director.

The White House will announce the transition at the National Economic Council on Friday, and it will take effect on Jan. 1.

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Zients’s move is just the latest elevation of an existing member of President Barack Obama’s economic team to a higher post, following Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Council of Economic Advisers chairman Jason Furman since the start of the second term.

Sperling, an around-the-clock worker who served in the White House throughout most of Bill Clinton’s presidency, reprised his role as NEC director for three years under Obama, after spending the first two years of the administration at the Treasury Department. His departure was expected, after reports emerged last month that he was telling friends he planned to leave since his wife and children had recently moved to Los Angeles.

Given his constant presence and track record in Democratic economic policy circles since the 1980s, Sperling was considered by liberals to be a trusted voice on Obama’s economic team as he advocated for tax cuts for most Americans and for small businesses.

“Gene understands better than anybody that our top priority as a nation is making sure that our economy once again works for working Americans,” Obama said in a statement first provided to POLITICO’s Playbook. “He has been a tireless proponent of efforts to strengthen the recovery and make our tax code more fair, whether in helping to design the payroll tax cut, fighting for job-creating tax credits for tens of millions of hardworking Americans or developing the American Jobs Act.”

David Plouffe, a longtime Obama adviser, on Friday praised Sperling as “a guy you want in the foxhole with you during tough times,” he wrote on Twitter.

Zients, the former head of the Corporate Executive Board, first joined the Obama administration in 2009, without any previous government experience. He served in various senior roles at the Office of Management and Budget, including as acting director for three months in 2010 and again from early 2012 through April of this year, after the Senate confirmed Sylvia Mathews Burwell. As he departed, Obama said he hoped to find another place for Zients in his administration.

On Friday, the president praised Zients’s track record, in business and in the administration. “Jeff has a sterling reputation as a business leader, and he earned the admiration and respect of everyone he worked with during his four years in leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget,” he said. “I am certain that in Jeff’s hands we will continue to have strong leadership of our economic policy team and his advice will be critical as we keep moving this country forward and building an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead.”

The New York Times first reported that the White House had finalized the transition, and speculated that Sperling would likely join Hillary Clinton’s economic team if she chooses to run for president in 2016. He was Clinton’s chief economic adviser during the 2008 race.